Evidence already published by
George Katkov, Stefan Possony, and Michael Futrell has established that the
return to Russia of Lenin and his party of exiled Bolsheviks, followed a few
weeks later by a party of Mensheviks, was financed and organized by the German
government.1 The necessary funds were transferred in part through the Nya Banken
in Stockholm, owned by Olof Aschberg, and the dual German objectives were: (a)
removal of Russia from the war, and (b) control of the postwar Russian market.2

We have now gone beyond this
evidence to establish a continuing working relationship between Bolshevik banker
Olof Aschberg and the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Company in New York
before, during, and after the Russian Revolution. In tsarist times Aschberg was
the Morgan agent in Russia and negotiator for Russian loans in the United
States; during 1917 Aschberg was financial intermediary for the revolutionaries;
and after the revolution Aschberg became head of Ruskombank, the first Soviet
international bank, while Max May, a vice president of the Morgan-controlled
Guaranty Trust, became director and chief of the Ruskom-bank foreign department.
We have presented documentary evidence of a continuing working relationship
between the Guaranty Trust Company and the Bolsheviks. The directors of Guaranty
Trust in 1917 are listed in Appendix 1.

Moreover, there is evidence of
transfers of funds from Wall Street bankers to international revolutionary
activities. For example, there is the statement (substantiated by a cablegram)
by William Boyce Thompson — a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, a large stockholder in the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Bank, and a
financial associate of the Guggenheims and the Morgans — that he (Thompson)
contributed $1 million to the Bolshevik Revolution for propaganda purposes.
Another example is John Reed, the American member of the Third International
executive committee who was financed and supported by Eugene Boissevain, a
private New York banker, and who was employed by Harry Payne Whitney's Metropolitan
magazine. Whitney was at that time a director of Guaranty Trust. We also
established that Ludwig Martens, the first Soviet "ambassador" to the
United States, was (according to British Intelligence chief Sir Basil Thompson)
backed by funds from Guaranty Trust Company. In tracing Trotsky's funding in the
U.S. we arrived at German sources, yet to be identified, in New York. And though
we do not know the precise German sources of Trotsky's funds, we do know
that Von Pavenstedt, the chief German espionage paymaster in the U.S., was also
senior partner of Amsinck & Co. Amsinck was owned by the ever-present
American International Corporation — also controlled by the J.P. Morgan firm.

Further, Wall Street firms
including Guaranty Trust were involved with Carranza's and Villa's wartime
revolutionary activities in Mexico. We also identified documentary evidence
concerning. a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen
revolution in China, a revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists
as the precursor of Mao's revolution in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney
negotiating with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this syndicate, was a director of
three Westinghouse subsidiaries, and we have found that Charles R. Crane of
Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the Russian Revolution.

Quite apart from finance, we
identified other, and possibly more significant, evidence of Wall Street
involvement in the Bolshevik cause. The American Red Cross Mission to Russia was
a private venture of William B. Thompson, who publicly proffered partisan
support to the Bolsheviks. British War Cabinet papers now available record that
British policy was diverted towards the Lenin-Trotsky regime by the personal
intervention of Thompson with Lloyd George in December 1917. We have reproduced
statements by director Thompson and deputy chairman William Lawrence Saunders,
both of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, strongly favoring the Bolshevists.
John Reed not only was financed from Wall Street, but had consistent support for
his activities, even to the extent of intervention with the State Department
from William Franklin Sands, executive secretary of American International
Corporation. In the sedition case of Robert Minor there are strong indications
and some circumstantial evidence that Colonel Edward House intervened to have
Minor released. The significance of the Minor case is that William B. Thompson's
program for Bolshevik revolution in Germany was the very program Minor was
implementing when arrested in Germany.

Some international agents, for
example Alexander Gumberg, worked for Wall Street and the Bolsheviks. In
1917 Gumberg was the representative of a U.S. firm in Petrograd, worked for
Thompson's American Red Cross Mission, became chief Bolshevik agent in
Scandinavia until he was deported from Norway, then became confidential
assistant to Reeve Schley of Chase Bank in New York and later to Floyd Odium of
Atlas Corporation.

This activity in behalf of the
Bolsheviks originated in large part from a single address: 120 Broadway, New
York City. The evidence for this observation is outlined but no conclusive
reason is given for the unusual concentration of activity at a single address,
except to state that it appears to be the foreign counterpart of Carroll
Quigley's
claim that J.P. Morgan infiltrated the domestic left. Morgan also infiltrated
the international left.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New
York was at 120 Broadway. The vehicle for this pro-Bolshevik activity was
American International Corporation — at 120 Broadway. AIC views on the
Bolshevik regime were requested by Secretary of State Robert Lansing only a few weeks after the revolution
began, and Sands, executive secretary of AIC, could barely restrain his
enthusiasm for the Bolshevik cause. Ludwig Martens, the Soviet's first
ambassador, had been vice president of Weinberg & Posner, which was also
located at 120-Broadway. Guaranty Trust Company was next door at 140 Broadway
but Guaranty Securities Co. was at 120 Broadway. In 1917 Hunt, Hill & Betts
was at 120 Broadway, and Charles B. Hill of this firm was the negotiator in the
Sun Yat-sen dealings. John MacGregor Grant Co., which was financed by Olof
Aschberg in Sweden and Guaranty Trust in the United States, and which was on the
Military Intelligence black list, was at 120 Broadway. The Guggenheims and the
executive heart of General Electric (also interested in American International)
were at 120 Broadway. We find it therefore hardly surprising that the Bankers
Club was also at 120 Broadway, on the top floor (the thirty-fourth).

It is significant that support
for the Bolsheviks did not cease with consolidation of the revolution;
therefore, this support cannot be wholly explained in terms of the war with
Germany. The American-Russian syndicate formed in 1918 to obtain concessions in
Russia was backed by the White, Guggenheim, and Sinclair interests. Directors of
companies controlled by these three financiers included Thomas W. Lamont
(Guaranty Trust), William Boyce Thompson (Federal Reserve Bank), and John Reed's
employer Harry Payne Whitney (Guaranty Trust). This strongly suggests that the
syndicate was formed to cash in on earlier support for the Bolshevik cause in
the revolutionary period. And then we found that Guaranty Trust financially
backed the Soviet Bureau in New York in 1919.

The first really concrete signal
that previous political and financial support was paying off came in 1923 when
the Soviets formed their first international bank, Ruskombank. Morgan associate
Olof Aschberg became nominal head of this Soviet bank; Max May, a vice president
of Guaranty Trust, became a director of Ruskom-bank, and the Ruskombank promptly
appointed Guaranty Trust Company its U.S. agent.

Russia was then — and is
today — the largest untapped market in the world. Moreover, Russia, then and
now, constituted the greatest potential competitive threat to American
industrial and financial supremacy. (A glance at a world map is sufficient to
spotlight the geographical difference between
the vast land mass of Russia and the smaller United States.) Wall Street must
have cold shivers when it visualizes Russia as a second super American
industrial giant.

But why allow Russia to become a
competitor and a challenge to U.S. supremacy? In the late nineteenth century,
Morgan/Rockefeller, and Guggenheim had demonstrated their monopolistic
proclivities. In Railroads and Regulation 1877-1916 Gabriel Kolko has
demonstrated how the railroad owners, not the farmers, wanted state control of
railroads in order to preserve their monopoly and abolish competition. So the
simplest explanation of our evidence is that a syndicate of Wall Street
financiers enlarged their monopoly ambitions and broadened horizons on a global
scale. The gigantic Russian market was to be converted into a captive market
and a technical colony to be exploited by a few high-powered American financiers
and the corporations under their control. What the Interstate Commerce
Commission and the Federal Trade Commission under the thumb of American industry
could achieve for that industry at home, a planned socialist government could
achieve for it abroad — given suitable support and inducements from Wall
Street and Washington, D.C.

Finally, lest this explanation
seem too radical, remember that it was Trotsky who appointed tsarist generals to
consolidate the Red Army; that it was Trotsky who appealed for American officers
to control revolutionary Russia and intervene in behalf of the Soviets; that it
was Trotsky who squashed first the libertarian element in the Russian Revolution
and then the workers and peasants; and that recorded history totally ignores
the 700,000-man Green Army composed of ex-Bolsheviks, angered at betrayal of the
revolution, who fought the Whites and the Reds. In other words, we are
suggesting that the Bolshevik Revolution was an alliance of statists: statist
revolutionaries and statist financiers aligned against the genuine revolutionary
libertarian elements in Russia.3

'The question now in the
readers' minds must be, were these bankers also secret Bolsheviks? No, of course
not. The financiers were without ideology. It would be a gross misinterpretation
to assume that assistance for the Bolshevists was ideologically motivated, in
any narrow sense. The financiers were power-motivated and therefore
assisted any political vehicle that would give them an entree to power:
Trotsky, Lenin, the tsar, Kolchak, Denikin — all received aid, more or less. All,
that is, but those who wanted a truly free individualist society.

Neither was aid restricted to
statist Bolsheviks and statist counter-Bolsheviks. John P. Diggins, in Mussolini
and Fascism: The View from America,4has noted in regard to Thomas Lamont
of Guaranty Trust that

Of all American business
leaders, the one who most vigorously patronized the cause of Fascism was Thomas
W. Lamont. Head of the powerful J.P. Morgan banking network, Lamont served as
something of a business consultant for the government of Fascist Italy.

Lamont secured a $100 million
loan for Mussolini in 1926 at a particularly crucial time for the Italian
dictator. We might remember too that the director of Guaranty Trust was the
father of Corliss Lamont, a domestic Communist. This evenhanded approach to the
twin totalitarian systems, communism and fascism, was not confined to the Lamont
family. For example, Otto Kahn, director of American International Corporation
and of Kuhn, Leob & Co., felt sure that "American capital invested in
Italy will find safety, encouragement, opportunity and reward."5 This is
the same Otto Kahn who lectured the socialist League of Industrial Democracy in
1924 that its objectives were his objectives.6 They differed only —
according to Otto Kahn — over the means of achieving these objectives.

Ivy Lee, Rockefeller's public
relations man, made similar pronouncements, and was responsible for selling the
Soviet regime to the gullible American public in the late 1920s. We also have
observed that Basil Miles, in charge of the Russian desk at the State Department
and a former associate of William Franklin Sands, was decidedly helpful to the
businessmen promoting Bolshevik causes; but in 1923 the same Miles authored a
profascist article, "Italy's Black Shirts and Business."7
"Success of the Fascists is an expression of Italy's youth," wrote
Miles while glorifying the fascist movement and applauding its esteem for
American business.

The Marburg Plan, financed by
Andrew Carnegie's ample heritage, was produced in the early years of the
twentieth century. It suggests premeditation for this kind of superficial
schizophrenia, which in fact masks an integrated
program of power acquisition: "What then if Carnegie and his unlimited
wealth, the international financiers and the Socialists could be organized in a
movement to compel the formation of a league to enforce peace."8

The governments of the world,
according to the Marburg Plan, were to be socialized while the ultimate power
would remain in the hands of the international financiers "to control
its councils and enforce peace [and so] provide a specific for all the political
ills of mankind."9

This idea was knit with other
elements with similar objectives. Lord Milner in England provides the
transatlantic example of banking interests recognizing the virtues and
possibilities of Marxism. Milner was a banker, influential in British wartime
policy, and pro-Marxist.10 In New York the socialist "X" club
was founded in 1903. It counted among its members not only the Communist Lincoln
Steffens, the socialist William English Walling, and the Communist banker Morris
Hillquit, but also John Dewey, James T. Shotwell, Charles Edward Russell, and
Rufus Weeks (vice president of New York Life Insurance Company). The annual
meeting of the Economic Club in the Astor Hotel, New York, witnessed socialist
speakers. In 1908, when A. Barton Hepburn, president of Chase National Bank, was
president of the Economic Club, the main speaker was the aforementioned Morris
Hillquit, who "had abundant opportunity to preach socialism to a gathering
which represented wealth and financial interests."11

From these unlikely seeds grew
the modern internationalist movement, which included not only the financiers
Carnegie, Paul Warburg, Otto Kahn, Bernard Baruch, and Herbert Hoover, but also
the Carnegie Foundation and its progeny International Conciliation. The
trustees of Carnegie were, as we have seen, prominent on the board of American
International Corporation. In 1910 Carnegie donated $10 million to found the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and among those on the board of
trustees were Elihu Root (Root Mission to Russia, 1917), Cleveland H. Dodge (a
financial backer of President Wilson), George W. Perkins (Morgan partner), G. J.
Balch (AIC and Amsinck), R. F. Herrick (AIC), H. W. Pritchett (AIC), and other
Wall Street luminaries. Woodrow Wilson came under the powerful
influence of — and indeed was financially indebted to — this group of
internationalists. As Jennings C. Wise has written, "Historians must never
forget that Woodrow Wilson... made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia
with an American passport."12

But Leon Trotsky also declared
himself an internationalist. We have remarked with some interest his high-level
internationalist connections, or at least friends, in Canada. Trotsky then was
not pro-Russian, or pro-Allied, or pro-German, as many have tried to make him
out to be. Trotsky was for world revolution, for world
dictatorship; he was, in one word, an internationalist.13 Bolshevists and
bankers have then this significant common ground — internationalism.
Revolution and international finance are not at all inconsistent if the result
of revolution is to establish more centralized authority. International finance
prefers to deal with central governments. The last thing the banking community
wants is laissez-faire economy and decentralized power because these would
disperse power.

This, therefore, is an
explanation that fits the evidence. This handful of bankers and promoters was
not Bolshevik, or Communist, or socialist, or Democrat, or even American. Above
all else these men wanted markets, preferably captive international markets —
and a monopoly of the captive world market as the ultimate goal. They wanted
markets that could be exploited monopolistically without fear of competition
from Russians, Germans, or anyone else — including American businessmen
outside the charmed circle. This closed group was apolitical and amoral. In
1917, it had a single-minded objective — a captive market in Russia, all
presented under, and intellectually protected by, the shelter of a league to
enforce the peace.

Wall Street did indeed achieve
its goal. American firms controlled by this syndicate were later to go on and
build the Soviet Union, and today are well on their way to bringing the Soviet
military-industrial complex into the age of the computer.

Today the objective is still
alive and well. John D. Rockefeller expounds it in his book The Second
American Revolution — which sports a five-pointed star on the title page.14 The book contains a naked plea for humanism, that is, a plea that our
first priority is to work for others. In other words,
a plea for collectivism. Humanism is collectivism. It is notable that the
Rockefellers, who have promoted this humanistic idea for a century, have not
turned their OWN property over to others.. Presumably it is implicit in their
recommendation that we all work for the Rockefellers.
Rockefeller's book promotes collectivism under the guises of "cautious
conservatism" and "the public good." It is in effect a plea for
the continuation of the earlier Morgan-Rockefeller support of collectivist
enterprises and mass subversion of individual rights.

In brief, the public good has
been, and is today, used as a device and an excuse for self-aggrandizement by an
elitist circle that pleads for world peace and human decency. But so long as the
reader looks at world history in terms of an inexorable Marxian conflict between
capitalism and communism, the objectives of such an alliance between
international finance and international revolution remain elusive. So will the
ludicrousness of promotion of the public good by plunderers. If these alliances
still elude the reader, then he should ponder the obvious fact that these same
international interests and promoters are always willing to determine what other
people should do, but are signally unwilling to be first in line to give up
their own wealth and power. Their mouths are open, their pockets are closed.

This technique, used by the
monopolists to gouge society, was set forth in the early twentieth century by
Frederick C. Howe in The Confessions of a Monopolist.15First,
says Howe, politics is a necessary part of business. To control industries it is
necessary to control Congress and the regulators and thus make society go to
work for you, the monopolist. So, according to Howe, the two principles of a
successful monopolist are, "First, let Society work for you; and second,
make a business of politics."16 These, wrote Howe, are the basic
"rules of big business."

Is there any evidence that this
magnificently sweeping objective was also known to Congress and the academic
world? Certainly the possibility was known and known publicly. For example,
witness the testimony of Albert Rhys Williams, an astute commentator on the
revolution, before the Senate Overman Committee:

. . . it
is probably true that under the soviet government industrial life will perhaps
be much slower in development than under the usual capitalistic system. But why
should a great industrial country like America desire the creation and
consequent competition of another great industrial rival? Are not the
interests of America in this regard in line with the slow tempo of development
which soviet Russia projects for herself?

Senator Wolcott: Then your argument
is that it would be to the interest of America to have Russia repressed?

MR. WILLIAMS: Not repressed ....

SENATOR WOLCOTT: You say. Why
should America desire Russia to become an industrial competitor with her?

MR. WILLIAMS: This is speaking
from a capitalistic standpoint. The whole interest of America is not, I think,
to have another great industrial rival, like Germany, England, France, and
Italy, thrown on the market in competition. I think another government over
there besides the Soviet government would perhaps increase the tempo or rate of
development of Russia, and we would have another rival. Of course, this is
arguing from a capitalistic standpoint.

SENATOR WOLCOTT: So you are
presenting an argument here which you think might appeal to the American people,
your point being this, that if we recognize the Soviet government of Russia as
it is constituted we will be recognizing a government that can not compete with
us in industry for a great many years?

MR. WILLIAMS: That is a fact.

SENATOR WOLCOTT: That is an
argument that under the Soviet government Russia is in no position, for a great
many years at least, to approach America industrially?

And in that forthright statement
by Albert Rhys Williams is the basic clue to the revisionist interpretation of
Russian history over the past half century.

Wall Street, or rather the
Morgan-Rockefeller complex represented at 120 Broadway and 14 Wall Street, had
something very close to Williams' argument in mind. Wall Street went to bat in
Washington for the Bolsheviks. It succeeded. The Soviet totalitarian regime
survived. In the 1930s foreign firms, mostly of the Morgan-Rockefeller group,
built the five-year plans. They have continued to build Russia, economically and
militarily.18 On the other hand, Wall Street presumably did not foresee the
Korean War and the Vietnam War — in which 100,000
Americans and countless allies lost their lives to Soviet armaments built with
this same imported U.S. technology. What seemed a farsighted, and undoubtedly
profitable, policy for a Wall Street syndicate, became a nightmare for millions
outside the elitist power circle and the ruling class.